The material presented on this site was originally developed by Stephen Duffull and Nick Holford for workshops run at the PAGANZ 2001 and the PAGE 2002 annual scientific meetings. The aim of this website is to assist new users with the practical application of PKBugs and WinBUGS for the analysis of population pharmacokinetics. The instructions and data sets provided in the downloads area allow a step by step approach to illustrate this technique for population analysis. Although the example provided is for a population pharmacokinetic analysis, this tool can equally be applied to pharmacodynamic analyses. It is assumed that users will have a passing knowledge of Bayesian techniques. If you require further readings on Bayesian techniques or Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods please see the references section.
PKBugs is a pharmacokinetically orientated interface for WinBUGS that prompts the user for inputs and automatically generates the pseudo-code used by WinBUGS. It will generate the necessary code, convert NONMEM compatible data files into the rectangular array format required, and sets up code for multiple dosing histories. The link to software and manuals for PKBugs and WinBUGS is available from our links area below. The software is currently available free.
The "wiggly snake"
|To top of page||
All the necessary files to get started are below. You must first register, download, install and request the key for WinBUGS from the appropriate websites below.
Once you have done this, you can
download the example:
Instructions for using PKBUGS and WinBUGS with the example model and some numerical outputs from the BUGS runs
files . A description of the files contained in the zip file
is in the "instructions" file. This also
contains instructions on how to prepare your own files from a NONMEM datafile.
|To top of page|
|To top of page||
A non-technical introduction
to the use of Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques
By: Carl Kirkpatrick